WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011
Holger Awaken
I've said it many times that the foreign policy of Barack Hussein Obama is a nightmare - first off, he HAS NO foreign policy other than ensuring that islamic countries and organizations get away with murder and secondly, we have seen the President's attention span in regards to foreign policy in the Middle East is fleeting at best. For a guy who has such an affinity to a Blackberry, this President doesn't seem to be able to do more than one thing at a time.
In essence, we have seen Obama's approach to Israel go from the extreme of calling for Israel to give up its current borders to the pre-'67 lines and two months later he is calling for unified action against Iran - it's like having a bi-polar in charge.
Well, this article at Family Security Matters ties a bit of a bow on the chaos that is the Middle East at this time and how not only Barack Hussein Obama hasn't helped the situation but actually has contributed to it. Our allies across the world simply have no idea where America stands on anything...anymore. There has been so much flip flopping and sending of mixed signals that it makes John Kerry from his Presidential run look solid as a rock in his convictions.
Middle East Mayhem
No foreign policy frontier has plagued the Obama administration more than the Middle East. Last week, even as the President headed to Hawaii to the Asian economic summit the top item on the international agenda came from the other side of the world.
Without question, the top issue last week was a blockbuster report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirming suspicions that Iran continues to have an active nuclear weapons program. As Heritage Middle East expert Jim Phillips observed “[t]he IAEA report is sure to reopen the debate over the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weaponization efforts in 2003.” Phillips recalled, [t]he Heritage Foundation lambasted the NIE at the time and has continued to point out the NIE’s weaknesses in light of Iran’s continued nuclear efforts.” The Obama administration had long relied on the IAEA report as an excuse for a go-soft approach with the regime in Tehran.
The IAEA report amounts to a smoking gun revealing that two years of a White House policy aimed at negotiating with Tehran and a half-hearted effort at implementing sanctions have done nothing to slow down the regime’s nuclear ambitions.
What is most troubling is not the IAEA’s belated confirmation of what’s up with the Iran nuclear weapons program, it’s how the world has changed since Tehran started its bomb-building quest. The prospect of Iran joining the nuclear club is far more terrifying today. Many analysts agree that nuclear-armed Tehran will spark an arms race in the region as countries seek to counter the regime’s advantage. The problem is that after they arm themselves, the nuclear camps won’t cleanly line up into two sides. Atomic competition in the Middle East will look “like a soccer game with a half dozen teams on the field, each trying to score their own goals.”
It is hard not to conclude that the administration’s mishandling of foreign affairs over the last two years has done anything but make “this nightmare scenario more likely, not less. It has done too little to slow Tehran’s nuclear program. It has been aloof from the Iranian democracy movement and a bystander in Egypt’s Arab Spring. It has botched relations with Iraq. It has calmly watched Turkey’s drift and taken the U.S.-Israeli alliance for granted. It’s much ballyhooed “reset” with Russia has accomplished nothing other than to make Moscow a more dominant nuclear power.” For that reason, President Obama’s grade for the week has to be “F” for failing to keep up with events in the Middle East.